There’s more to working with a ghostwriter than figuring out what their services cost.

Even global enterprises that regularly use outside ghostwriters or agencies such as Ergo Editorial to develop their thought leadership content don’t always take advantage of everything those writers can offer.

Getting the most out of contract writers doesn’t have to be difficult as long as you plan ahead and are mindful of how you engage with them. That’s the word from expert ghostwriters and the clients they work with who spoke at the recent Gathering of the Ghosts in New York. The two-day conference on collaborative writing was cosponsored by Gotham Ghostwriters, the New York ghostwriting agency, and the Association of Ghostwriters.

These days, working with collaborative writers may also mean navigating the technicalities and ethics ofusing AI for writing-related work. Here are some suggestions for how to get the most out of the writers you work with, taken from advice shared at the conference:

Set clear expectations about using AI. Concerns with AI abound, but it hasn’t stopped contract writers from experimenting with the technology, or in some cases, embracing it altogether. Sixty-eight percent of those writers use AI at least some of the time, a higher proportion than writers in general (61%), according to the “AI and the Writing Profession Study,” a just- published report on AI and writing from Gotham Ghostwriters and expert collaborative writer Josh Bernoff. However, of the dozen types of writers included in the survey, book ghostwriters were among the least likely to call themselves advanced AI users, according to Bernoff. Only 11% used that description vs. 40% who consider themselves AI “dabblers” and 31% who self-report as “nonusers.”

If you or the writers you collaborate with aren’t using AI yet, panelists suggested starting small. Apply the tools to time-consuming tasks that don’t add a lot of value, such as research or brainstorming outlines or titles. Panelists extolled the virtues of GenAI tools for summarizing academic journal articles or other dense background material you might need to cite in a book or report. If you or your ghostwriter use AI for research, though, fact-check everything to ensure it’s accurate. “AI has no truth function, so you have to validate facts,” said Katia Walsh, former chief digital officer at Harvard Business School and co-author of “Winning with AI: The 90-Day Blueprint for Success,” to be published soon.

Pick a collaboration style that works for you. Chances are the contract writer you’ve hired for a book project, research report, or article series has done a lot of that kind of work before and has a preferred way of working. But every writing project is different, and the way a writer collaborated with a previous client might not be what works for you. When you’re negotiating terms of your arrangement, discuss how you want to work. At the beginning of a book project, for example, you may want to schedule weekly interviews, or have the writer come to your home or office for a days-long brainstorming session. When ghostwriter Joanne Gordon started working with Lew Frankfort, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of Coach, on “Bag Man: The Story Behind the Improbable Rise of Coach” (Harvard Business Press, 2025), he and she spent hours just talking, to build trust. “It’s a hedge against the inevitable problems that will come up,” Gordon said.

It’s all about the voice. Getting the voice right  means accurately portraying the way you express yourself, through speech patterns, pet words, or phrases, and other tells that are specific to you. Based on the experiences that conference presenters shared, collaborators use various techniques to capture an author’s voice, such as these:

• Spending time talking before starting the actual interviewing and writing process, so conversations feel natural and you feel comfortable opening up.
• Giving the writer other material you’ve written or interviews you’ve done so they can start to pick up your written and verbal idiosyncrasies.
• Encouraging the writer to transcribe the interviews you do for the project, even if they use a transcription service. Hearing how you talk can help make writing in your voice second nature.

Expect pushback. When you contract with an experienced collaborative writer, you’re hiring someone who may challenge you on multiple levels of a piece of writing. It’s not because they love a debate. Professional writers are programmed to think in terms of the big picture and recognize that even the smallest of details can add or subtract from it. The detail could be the logic of the argument that underpins the thesis of an article or blog post, the sources you’ve chosen to back up an assertion, or the specifics you’re using in a case study. Good business writing is built on good thinking, and high-level writers are in demand because they’re masters of both. If you’re retaining a contract writer, know that the best of them will automatically be testing your theories and ideas.

Limit who reviews drafts. Several conference panelists discussed how much harder projects can be when multiple people other than the author provide feedback – whether it’s a spouse, friend, fellow C-suite leaders, or your comms team. Experienced writers deal with this situation all the time, so don’t hesitate to ask them for best practices. In my own experience, if multiple people are involved in reviews, it’s best to have someone act as the project liaison to compile feedback and work out any differences of opinion about the content before giving the draft back to the writer for revisions. Busy CEOs or top leaders might farm out that task to someone else, but they still need to make the ultimate call about what stays and what goes.

To attract a traditional book publisher, build or expand your platform. Book publishing is its own particular thing. Most agents and publishers look for an author to have some online presence or platform, in order to gauge what a book’s potential readership could be. The specific platform doesn’t matter as much as who’s following you on it; it could be TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, or Substack depending on the situation or the book genre. Even then, only a small percentage of your online followers are likely to buy your book. “I have clients with 2, 3, or 5 million followers,” one agent at the conference said, “and they’re selling 5% (of their books) to their audience.”

If you don’t already have a healthy following, ask the writer you’re working with if they provide social media management. If they do, any fee they charge for that service would be separate from their fee for a book proposal or book. If they don’t, work with a separate internal or external person or team for platform-building work.

Michelle Rafter is a Portland, Oregon, business journalist turned ghostwriter and part of the Ergo Editorial writing team. Her new e-book, “Building an Independent Writing Business,” is available exclusively for members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), where she is publications chair.